Potions

Have you noticed how SERIOUS this blog has been getting lately? I know. I must be in winter mode where I brood about the troubles of the world while drinking hot beverages in my dark apartment. But there are some light-hearted things happening around our house including POTION MAKING.

I may not have mentioned before on this blog my penchant for gin. (What?!?! A pastor who loves gin?!??! Yes. And give me a break. It's not like I'm Methodist or anything...though I do know some nice Methodists who ALSO love gin.) Anyway, the truth is I love it. I love gin. Sooooo much. Of all varieties. And I especially love it when it's mixed with tonic.  (At this moment I'd like to give a shout-out to my brother-in-law who first introduced me to this heavenly combination while on a family vacation. My life would never have been the same without this loving act of gin-vangelism. Also, I would have still been able to fit into my skinny jeans, but that's a story for another time. So thanks, Bro!). Now, back to the matter at hand.

Though you may not have known about my gin obsession, you certainly may have already deduced my tendency to get obsessed with things. And so it may not surprise you that when I found out several months ago that one could make one's own tonic, I was on a quest to do so. And so it began.

And it went something like this:

Step One: Procure illicit substances from abroad. 
So it turns out the main ingredient of tonic is quinine. In case you don't know what this is, I'll save you the trouble of searching Wikipedia and share with you what I've learned. Quinine is a chemical found in the bark of the Cinchona tree, a tree indigenous to South America where its medicinal qualities had been well known for some time.  In the 16th century, when malaria was a rising problem in Europe, a Jesuit missionary and apothecary in South America became aware of quinine and suggested it as a potential treatment. It worked and the demand for it in Europe skyrocketed (It's tough business colonizing the entire global south leaving behind centuries of unrest and paternalism....there are tons of mosquitos down there!)  The problem was (no it wasn't colonialism), it was that quinine had an extremely bitter taste (If you ask me, a small price to pay for not dying from malaria, but what do I know?). And so adding water, sugar and a bit of lime and some gin (you can always use a little gin!) to the concoction became the custom and the Gin and Tonic was born. (Yay!) Quinine is still used today to treat malaria, though other better treatments have since been developed. Unfortunately, the FDA thinks this is the only thing you should use it for.*  All this is a long way of saying: you can't buy quinine in the United States. Unless you have malaria and a prescription. So you have to search online and pay some sketchy website in Canada to send it to you. Which I had no qualms about doing, of course, unless the person reading this is from the FDA in which case, I'm so sorry, I had no idea.

After several weeks, my package arrived choc full of quinine! And I was ready to get started!

Step Two: Make a Syrup with a Lot of CRAZY Ingredients
The next step in making your own tonic is to brew up a special tonic syrup. It helps if you have a partner in crime (Mr. LIOLI), several hours, some wine and a good sense of humor.  We decided to make a half batch each of two different recipes, which can be found here and here. (We ended up liking the second much better).

The main ingredients are quinine powder, sugar (or agave if you are super hipster), lemongrass, citric acid and citrus zest.

You mix these together, add heat and boil away until all is well distilled.

Then you strain it. Many, many, many times. And then you strain it some more. We did this in several stages. Once through a regular metal strainer, several times through cheesecloth (which of course we had on hand already....such a small world!) and lastly through several coffee filters. We weren't really sure when it was strained enough so we just gave us when we got bored and tired. 

What we produced was thick brownish red potion about the consistency of maple syrup.


 Step Three: Make some carbonated water. Mix with syrup and gin. Enjoy!

The idea is that you will mix the syrup you just made with carbonated water (from the SodaStream machine I'm sure you already have) add gin and enjoy. We hit a bit of a snag here as when we did this for the first time, we managed to produce a beverage that somehow simultaneously tasted WAY too sweet and WAY too bitter at the same time and kind of made us want to die. Rather than melt into a puddle of emotional goo, which was my first response, Mr. LIOLI suggested that we postpone judgment until after we had a massive Tonic-concocting-taste-testing event in which we tried to carefully replicate the exact taste of Schweppes tonic water. We were able to several nights later and enjoyed our first homemade G&T. Yum! So good. So homemade. Cheers!

Step Four: Get a second job. 
As it turns out, we didn't quite get the economies of scale down the first time around. I estimate that the entire endeavor cost about $61 which in retrospect was not a huge savings over bottles of tonic that cost $1.  But I will not give up hope. Next time, I think I'll buy more quinine in bulk and make it WORTH it. (This may remind you of the time I tried to make all my own jam and faced a similar economies of scale challenge. I'm working through it.)

Now, if you think it hasn't escaped my attention that it is actually possible to distill one's own gin, you've got another think coming and a need to keep your eye out for a future post about my secret plans for a foray into distillation!


*Other interesting things about quinine??? It glows in the dark under a black light. It is sometimes used to cut cocaine and other street drugs. It can cure restless leg syndrome (or you could just put a bar of soap under your sheet. Seriously) You could have read all this on Wikipedia....but isn't it more fun to read it here?